Renee Mudgett (She/They) is a mixed-media artist who utilizes collage, paint, photography and screen printing. As a survivor of domestic violence, Renee’s work is a vivid self portrait, telling the ongoing story of the challenges that arise when leaving abuse. Her abstract work allows for a symbolic representation of the internal struggles: confusion, security, re-experiencing, and identity. The not-fully-rendered imagery depicts isolation while the shapes are attempting to navigate through uncertainty to a new beginning. The simplicity of Renee’s work symbolizes how subtle pain can appear, but the depth that can be felt; through the seeming innocence of the content, but the vastness given by the context.

Caitlin Arquines (She/Her), AKA Cait Arq, is a singer-songwriter and music curator based in Chicago. She’s been writing both songs and poetry since grade school. In middle and high school, she performed at various spoken word events and competed in slam poetry contests around Chicago (i.e. louder than a bomb, slammin’ the sun down). Since then, many of her written poems serve as “seeds” for her songwriting. While both her past and newest original music has been available for listening, these will be her first pieces of poetry to be published. You can find her on Instagram at caitarq.

Spencer Westphalen (He/Him) is an abstract artist based in Chicago. His creative journey is deeply intertwined with his Buddhist practice of chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo. This practice is the guiding force behind his work, allowing him to tap into a profound, authentic self-shaped by the mystic law of Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo.

Grace Tsichlis earned her MFA from DePaul University and lives in Chicago. In her free time, she enjoys drinking earl grey tea, watching stand-up comedy, and baking.

Stephanie Weber is a Cuban American comedian and writer from Chicago. She has performed all over the city at The Second City, iO, Annoyance, Lincoln Lodge, and Chicago Underground Comedy among many others. Her written work has been published in Reductress, The AV Club, Mental Floss, Slate, and more. She wrote and directed the short film Real Live Girls. In 2024, she got her MFA in dramatic writing from SCAD.

Satori is a poet and author from Rochester, New York who found herself in Chicago after waking up from a three month long nightmare. Satori has considered herself a poet from a very young age, and has been sharing her riddles and rhymes with her community since she was 14, when she first came onto the slam poetry scene in her hometown for the first time. Satori finds inspiration in helping disoriented cicadas back onto trees, watching an elderly couple shop for starches at the farmers market, and painstakingly analyzing every flaw in her family tree. Most importantly, she is thrilled to be here! :)

Adriana Perez is an emerging writer, making her debut to the Chicago literary scene through Raging Opossum Press, with her short story Palm Springs. Someone once gave her a Lisa Frank journal for her 5th birthday, and that eventually turned into mountains of composition notebooks filled with airport thoughts, pillow talk, and every slice of life in between. You can find her on Instagram at @minestrone_cowboy

Connor McKenzie (He/Him)is a writer, musician & currently fronting the Chicago based noise-rock group Low Animal. He is also known for performing in other acts such as Black Nail and Tweak over the last decade. Originally from Champaign, IL he has moved frequently and spent years all around Illinois, Minnesota & Rhode Island. Connor is drawn to wild, uneasy & exhilarating performances, aiming to captivate and connect by any means necessary. You can find him on Instagram at @cmmkenz and his band, Low Animal, at lowanimalband.

Lily Valentine (She/Her)is a poet and middle school English teacher who lives in Logan Square, Chicago. She has previously been published in After Hours and Arcturus. She originally grew up in Boulder, Colorado before moving to the midwest to attend Kenyon College, where she majored in English with a creative writing emphasis and art history. Her favorite themes to explore in her work are cleanliness, boredom, and the passage of time. You can find her on Instagram at @octoberlilies

Caitlin Arquines (She/Her), AKA Cait Arq, is a singer-songwriter and music curator based in Chicago. She’s been writing both songs and poetry since grade school. In middle and high school, she performed at various spoken word events and competed in slam poetry contests around Chicago (i.e. louder than a bomb, slammin’ the sun down). Since then, many of her written poems serve as “seeds” for her songwriting. While both her past and newest original music has been available for listening, these will be her first pieces of poetry to be published. You can find her on Instagram at caitarq.

Taylor Thornburg is an author and essayist based in Chicago, Illinois. His fiction explores strange yet humane ways of being. His other fiction can be found in the Garfield Lake Review, Thirteenth Floor Magazine, L'Esprit Literary Review, Valley Voices, Heartwood Literary Review, and elsewhere.

Zach Riley (He/Him) is a visual artist and actor based in Chicago with a focus on acrylic and oil painting. Zach's style is a blend of surrealism and expressionism with several pieces standing as direct accounts of his own dreams. Zach credits a lot of his visual "lens" to mythology, retro campy horror/ sci-fi fantasy movies, comics and video games that he navigates pathos through. He explains, "There is this magic world that is invisible to the naked eye. Particles, frequencies, and energy that surround/ and are emitted by people and places. In my work I hope to marry what is seen with the sensation of what is felt in my heart and in my nerves. To express the essence and aura of something, which inherently feels mystical." He adds, "I also like it when you can take this special, ethereal or horrifying sensation and infuse it with this absurd campiness, where it shouldn't make any sense yet somehow it makes THE most sense, and theres a delightful element of humor and intrigue to explore in that space" You can find him Instagram at zachofalltrades333 or visit his redbubble shop under www.redbubble.com/people/zachofalltradez